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Tuesday, 27 November 2012

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 Ngos Have Poverty For Tea

It is strange if not totally mind-numbing that the very people who talk about human rights have no time to spare a thought for a poverty alleviation programme as far reaching as Divi Neguma.

The entire civil society intellectual lobby in this country has been shedding copious tears latterly about what they refer to as the undermining of the 13th Amendment to the constitution by the Divi Neguma Bill.

Constitutions are for constitutional lawyers and political science boffins.

That none of the tear-jerkers in these intellectual compartments called ‘civil society think tanks’ have thought about the human dimension of the Divi Neguma programme is telling. It is about people who eke out an existence out of harsh and unyielding territory, in the far reaches of this country.

The government steps out to lend them a hand and uplift their lives of long running hardship and privation, and look at the first people to protest on grounds of constitutional considerations of an entirely academic nature?

What’s moot here is the extensive public campaign to paint the Divi Neguma Bill as a piece of legislation that is objectionable from a legal scholar’s standpoint. This is typical of NGO humbuggery and insensitivity.

The fact is that Provincial Councils are not empowered to address poverty alleviation issues in a cohesive and organized manner. It goes without saying, also, that what one Provincial Council does for instance by way of possibly successful poverty alleviation, the other will not or will not be able to mimic.

This is why an all-encompassing national policy on poverty alleviation is a policy imperative. Social security, be it in the United States or closer home in India, is not an issue left to the regional or state administrations alone.

But poverty is not an issue that comes within the ambit of the beer swilling, sausage chomping, and at the higher level, the champagne guzzling and cigar chomping non-governmental coterie. Poverty interests these people only when as Sainath the explosively insightful Indian journalist says, the subject becomes so glamorous that everybody comes to ‘poverty seminars’ held in glittering five star facilities, expect abjectly poor people. ..

It is time for a national consensus on poverty alleviation with a special accent on the Divi Neguma legislation. The poor people of this country should be made privy to the plot among the privileged and the foreign-funded to bury what is after all their programme, under a heap of constitutional and legal gobbledygook.

Time and the energy devoted by the civil society lobbies to show that Divi Neguma undercuts the 13th Amendment to the constitution consists of a modern day saga of subtle subversion of what belongs to the poor people of this land - - the salt of this earth. Not one word was spoken about the good that the Divi Neguma programme will entail the debt-ridden and the near bankrupt on the nether edges of our society.

Constitutional law and the details involved therein could be talked of until the cows come home, but what was missing was a holistic treatment of the subject under review. Nobody thought it fit to present a pro and con analysis about how the poor would fare with and without the Divi Neguma.

That part of the discourse was deliberately shut out from the public radar. Instead of the rice and pol sambol issues of the impoverished farmer or handyman, legal minutiae were presented as the all important factors that stood to destabilize the nation.

What destabilizes nations in the end, and tears up the social fabric? What caused two social convulsions - - three really -- in terms of two JVP uprisings and the Northern terrorist onslaught?

\It was plain and simple bread and dhal issues that left a vast swathe of our youth at the mercy of the predator campaigners who wanted to use impressionable youth to ride to power on their backs.

This is why it’s painful to see the rich, powerful and well-connected privately funded intellectual lobby in Colombo opt to block one of the most far reaching poverty alleviation programmes since independence, with a nod to the leather bound and gilt-edged law books.

CHINA AND LANKA before the coloniser

Sri Lanka had close contacts with China before the intervention of European colonial powers. The contacts between the two countries were mainly motivated to enhance direct and indirect commercial relations and direct cultural relations which helped exchange of Buddhist missions.

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K.H.J. Wijedasa's Governance, Heritage and Sustainability:

Life, Flux And Inspiration

As the title of the book would reveal this book covers a wide range of concerns applicable to Sri Lanka of today. Governance and sustainability are topics which are applicable to any country. But Sri Lanka, like many countries in South Asia has a long standing cultural heritage which also has to be kept in view when dealing with the subjects governance and sustainability. This is a complex book which covers many aspects of the Sri Lankan society which are directly relevant to the topics of concern. In this review therefore I would like to deal only with some aspects of the presentations made by the author in relation to Sri Lankan culture.

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Tamil parties follow TERRORIST DOCTRINE

Sandasen Marasinghe Following are the excerpts:

The Parliament is a closely knit unit. The former Parliament is a small place. But we don't have it here. This is a large building like a hotel. You don't come in contact with your friends. You have lack of contact here. In those days, even after a heated debate, one would always have tea with each other. That was the political environment in which we lived in at that time.

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Reminiscences of Gold

Through bombs and basics at Central Bank

This week’s Reminiscences features W. A. Wijewardena, the former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank. He is a self-made man, and it was through hard work that he made his way to the very top on his own. His life story is so inspiring that he can be taken as a role model for the young generation. As the President of the British Management School (BMS), now he works with young minds helping them to reach the frontiers of new knowledge.

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